Palavras de Família

A very surreal looking film. Interesting colours and tones and deliberate filming car scenes over a filmed background.

In essence it is about relationships and long-term grief ... and scrabble.

It is worth a watch.

I loved the movie. Bill Nighy is superb in anything he does, the rest of the cast were wonderful. It was written with humour, wittiness with a hint of sadness.

It is a joy to watch it. First, because of its style of shooting and second, because of its clear and rich colors. It looks as an brilliant school of art, designed precisely. On the other hand it is a good story, done in some traditional and emotional way, and who is playing in. Bill Nighy is as always excellent, elegant and charming.

Despite the rather grim topic, the film manages not to be overly sad. In fact it is an enjoyable journey of a father who becomes obsessed with scrabble in order to cope with his loss. It is a good psychological portrayal pf grief.

'Sometimes Always Never (2019)' is a bit of an oddity, I suppose, because of its combination of mundanity and quirkiness. It tells a grounded - though, ever-so-slightly absurdist - story with a real emotional weight to it, often with genuine subtlety but more frequently with a strange sort of passivity, and tends to toe the line between comedy and drama to the point that a distinction between the two isn't really worth making. It's not like it's particularly unfocused or haphazard, however, as it certainly feels calculated. Yet, even in its almost articulated unwillingness to conform to convention, there's a sort of intangible sense that it doesn't quite know how odd it is. It's exactly what it wants, and needs, to be. As you can tell, it's a fairly difficult experience to categorise. All in all, though, it's an enjoyable one. It has a compelling central theme and a nice set of main characters, even if the former isn't fleshed out as much as you'd like thanks to a somewhat baggy mid-section. The tone of the thing also fluctuates a little. Usually, it balances the serious with the silly, making sure that both do a decent job of developing character, but there are some moments that make you wish the movie would make its mind up as to whether or not its world is actually 'heightened' (which could be pushed further, if that is the case). It sometimes sounds overly 'written', too; this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the sequences where you actually notice the writing pale in comparison to the ones where you don't. I'll also say that, while it's well directed overall, there are some visual stylistic choices that I don't think pay off. Of course, these issues don't prevent the flick from being generally entertaining. It's somewhat endearing, with great performances and (from what came through in the final result) a good screenplay. It's not perfect, or indeed overly satisfying, and its odd tone - or general 'status', I guess - does make it a bit difficult to get a handle on. Still, it's a good effort that nicely tells a personal, rather unique story. 6/10